The Future of Accounting: Leadership and Culture with Liz Farr

Liz Farr has had a remarkable life’s journey from a childhood where she learned accounting principles, to many years later taking a tax preparation class, then working as an accountant navigating chaotic tax seasons, to finally, becoming a successful ghostwriter and podcast host. Join John Randolph on Episode 44 of CPA Life as he gleans insights from Liz’s time in and around the accounting profession. She shares insights on modern accounting challenges, talent issues, and innovative practices for sustainable, people-centric firms in today’s world.

Transcript:

Welcome to another episode of the CPA Life Podcast, where we are continually looking to spotlight firms, firm leaders and industry insiders who are passionate about building more modern-minded, people-centric firms in today’s world. And today, we’re excited to be speaking with someone who brings a pretty interesting perspective to the discussion. Liz Farr is someone who has lived through the chaos of a stereotypical tax season or two, and in the midst of her journey, started writing about some of the things going on in the industry for a few publications, and now spends a hundred percent of her time running a communications company that helps industry thought leaders write articles as a ghostwriter, and she’s also the host of the CPA Trendlines Podcast, Accounting Disruptors conversations. So Liz, welcome to the show.

Thanks a lot, John. Glad to be here.

I’m excited to get to learn a little bit more about your journey, what you’ve done, the types of paths that you’ve taken, some of the things that you’ve seen, also talk about some of the correlation between accounting industry challenges, but also some of the accounting challenges within the corporate side of accounting as well. So I want to dig into some of those things, but before we hop into all of that, give us a little bit of an idea of how you got on this path that you’re now on in the public accounting world.

Well, it’s kind of a long journey. My first exposure to accounting was in high school, when I was the treasurer of both my Explorer Post and my Girl Scout Troop, and both were running businesses, so somebody’s mom taught me the basics of double entry accounting, sent me home with some green 10 column ledger pads, and I really liked it. I liked, you know, tallying things up and getting everything lined up and reconciling and doing all of that. But my friends thought I was just nuts, because I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which, you know, if you’ve seen Oppenheimer, you know that’s where the atomic bomb was created. So, almost everybody’s parents worked for the labs. Business was something that you went into if you weren’t smart enough to be the scientist.

So, you know, I kind of put that aside, went into, you know, first engineering, then got a degree in biochemistry, worked in that field for about four years, then did a detour through linguistics, and did a bunch of stuff. Then I was driving past the local H&R Block. And they had a big sign up that said, “tax classes, sign up for our tax classes.” And I thought, huh, that might be a way for me to understand how to deal with my tax situation, because my husband and I had inherited some investments. So we’d get these 1099s where you’re like, what is this? OID, you know, bond premiums, what is this? And we were baffled.

So I signed up for the class just intending to learn enough to do my tax return. Well, about halfway through the class, the teacher who was the owner of that franchise said, Liz, you’re going to come work for me, come tax season this year, aren’t you? And the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind that’s what this class was for. And I just kind of said, sure. And so that was the shortest job interview I’ve ever had. Turned out I really liked doing that work. So I started looking around for how I could make that a full time job. I got a master’s of accounting at UNM’s Anderson School of Management, they were just starting a new degree program for people who had different degrees.

Interesting.

And that’s how it got started. Spent about 11 years at one firm, I was in public accounting for about 15 years. And by the end I was like, I just got to get out of here. You know, it was the same thing that we’ve been hearing forever, but I had to get out, and started writing. Didn’t get much support from the firm I was at, so I moved to a different firm that thought that was great. I did a newsletter. Then, eventually, I launched full time as a writer and left public accounting completely behind, so not looking back one bit.

But, you know, it’s interesting how you’ve been able to take and merge the two together with your, you know, passion for communication, getting the message out. And not only you yourself getting that message out through your podcast, but also helping others get that message out because there’s in my experience in the recruiting world, there’s so many times that we will talk to people that have great ideas, great stories, great backgrounds, but they just, I don’t know any other way to put this: They suck at getting that message out there. It’s a wonderful message, but they can’t package it in a way that is engaging. And so you having the ability to do that as a ghostwriter, also through your podcast, I think is a significant win for so many people in the business that have great ideas, great thoughts, but either don’t have the time, energy, effort, or ability to package that in a way and get that message out.

Absolutely. I really enjoy it. You know, there’s just something that gives me a lot of pleasure about getting somebody’s ideas into the hands of the people that need it. People ask me all the time, well, doesn’t it bother you that somebody else gets the credit for something you wrote? And I say, no. You know, my pat answer used to be, well, that’s what they paid me for. But also, you know, I just want to help make accounting a better profession for the people behind me. So if I can help get somebody’s brilliant ideas into somebody else’s head, then it doesn’t really matter to me whose name is on it, because the idea is what matters to me.

Yep. You know, as you’re sitting there talking about that, Liz, I’m thinking about how, I think that comes with time, age, maturity in our lives. ’Cause I know there was a time in my life where there’s been a couple of things that have happened and I wanted to make sure that I got the recognition. I wanted to make sure that, you know, someone saw my hand go up, but then as I matured in age, there were a couple of times in consulting situations where I had gone to the owner of the company to talk about something that I thought we needed to do. And it’s just this, you know, you’re talking to a brick wall.

And two, three, four weeks later, owner comes to me and says, hey, I was talking to this guy and he had some ideas that I think that could have some legs to it. Talk to him. And I talked to the guy, and it’s everything I’ve been talking to this owner about, and I told that guy, I said, look, that’s exactly what I’ve been telling him to do for the last two months. So, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to agree with everything that you’re saying, and he’s going to end up paying you to implement those things that would have been free if I had done them. But, he’s gonna have to learn that lesson the hard way, and I don’t care who gets the credit, because that is what’s gonna help us win.

That’s right.

That’s what’s important to me. I just want us to win. I don’t care who gets to hold the trophy. I just want us all to win, and I think that comes with time and maturity, like you’re saying, just, you know, let’s get those ideas out there because there’s a lot of people with some really good ideas.

Yeah. And just getting your ego out of the way is so important. And that really was part of what drove me out of public accounting. It was all the egos. They had their own ways of doing things. They had control over everything. They had control over the marketing. And so they were not willing to give up a tiny piece of it to me to try something new, because that would have meant losing a little bit of control and to try something new that might actually work.

You know, you spent, and you touched on this just a little bit, you spent a good 13, 14, 15 years in public accounting. I mean, ultimately, what was it that—well, I guess a better question is, was there something that drove you to a position of enough is enough, I’m out, or was it something that was enticing on the other side of the road, like your writing, that you decided to make full-time, or was it a combination of the two?

Yeah, a lot of it was just the situation I was in. I’d gotten to a point at one firm where every time I thought about doing that for the rest of my life, it was like looking down a long, dark tunnel with no exit. And that’s kind of how I describe it. I had looked up at the people above me and I thought, do I want any of their jobs?

Oh, Liz, that’s huge.

And I said, no, no, not the way that they’re doing it.

Yep. I had a gentleman on the podcast a while back by the name of Michael Meihaus. Michael had left public accounting and started his own firm. He specializes in 401(k) audits and benefit plan audits. And Michael had posted something about, you know, Hey, it’s been one year, here’s what I’ve learned over the last year that I wish I would have known the day I started my firm. And so I had him on the podcast, and we talked about some of those things, and one of the things that he talked about as we were discussing about his jettison from public accounting was kind of what you touched on. And his advice to people is look at the people up the ladder from you. Do you aspire to have their life, whether it’s their professional position, their personal situation at home, whatever it is, is that an aspiration for you? And I don’t mean the position, I’m talking about actually what that person has. And if the answer is no, then it’s time to walk away. Go find somebody else that you can say, you know what? I want to be like that. What’s the wonderful adage we used to tell our kids and our parents used to tell us? You’re the sum of the five to six people that you hang around the most?

Yeah.

And if that’s who you’re hanging around and it’s not who you want to be, it’s time to make a move.

Right, right. Or, you know, I think it came to me that I was not meant to stay in public accounting when I went to a CPE, you know, an eight hour program on something, and the guy presenting had written his own material and he was very engaging. Afterwards, I kind of bumped into him and it just kind of just blurted out. I didn’t even think about it. I said, I want to be like you when I grow up. And so that was like, huh. Maybe there’s something there, not just the doing, but the teaching and helping people to understand things.

You know, what you just said to me resonates in so many different ways, and I want to dig into a couple of things here. You talk to so many different firm leaders, trainers, consultants, advisors, through your Accounting Disruptors podcast. There’s so many things that those leaders are doing right to address some of the things that are wrong. And one of the things that I see when I look at what some of those leaders are doing well versus other firms is they’re starting to understand, I think it’s a problem across multiple industries, accounting being one of them, but I think it’s affected accounting longer than most other industries, and that is the mindset of up or out. You’ve got to continue to grow and you’ve got to continue to grow in title and responsibility or you’re out the door.

So we’re going to take our best staff, we’re going to make them a senior. We’re going to take our best senior, we’re going to make them a manager. We take our best manager, make them a senior kind of mindset. And in the world that we’re in today, you’ve got to create an environment, in my opinion, for your people to succeed at what they’re passionate about. And you may not be the best people person. You may be a great technical person, but in a stereotypical public accounting environment, it’s up or out.

Exactly.

We don’t have room for you. And if we make room for you and I’m talking stereotypical environment, if we make room for you, you’re kind of a purple squirrel. You don’t really fit in and we don’t really know what to do with you. And so you’re going to feel awkward for a while. We’re going to feel awkward for a while. And you’re probably going to leave in that process. I think that when you have the ability to do what you did, and say, hey, there may be something here because I’m passionate about writing. How can I dovetail that? I mean, when you talk to the leaders that you talk to, what are you hearing about how they approach the people issue of, you know, the whole mindset of up or out? Are they creating environments and structures where they put people in winning positions and not necessarily saying, hey, you have to go from here to here or we don’t have a role for you?

No, they’re not doing that at all. Many of them have completely discarded the old partnership structure. The firm leader is now the CEO. It’s not the managing partner who has to get consensus from a group of quote-unquote, “peers,” but they are the chief executive officer. The buck stops with them. And they’re also willing to create and develop new positions within the firm, with job descriptions that did not exist when I was in public accounting, things like Client Liaison Manager or Implementer in Charge. You know, they take the person who’s really good at the technology and they let them work with all their CAS clients to get all the tech working right together. They take the person who really likes to work with people and they interface with the clients. They are the contact point with the clients and the preparers and the managers. You know, or they do something in between.

You know, towards the end of my time in public accounting, I was actually offered a position as half marketing and half tax manager, but I knew enough about that firm that I knew that would be, oh, 70 hours a week of tax manager and another 20 hours a week of marketing. Hmm! I don’t think so. And your firm turnover over on the tax side, that’s really high, huh? I don’t think so.

It’s interesting that you talk about that because that is reality, what so many traditional mindset firms that may try to do that run into, because what it comes back to so many times is, hey Liz, we can let you do this marketing, and we can let you do this technology integration thing that you’re really passionate about, but where do we bill that time?

Exactly.

What do we do with that?

Yeah, and you know, and it’s interesting you bring up billable time because, you know, I have two memories of hearing about time that are kind of contradictory. One was on my very first day as an intern at a CPA firm, and the manager who was training me, said, we sell our time, so you have to track your time. That’s what we sell. Okay, that’s what we do. We track our time. And then the other memory I have was talking to one of the partners about a tax return I’d done for a client of his, and I had figured out how to do this really efficiently and really quickly. So, I had, you know, I think maybe two or three hundred dollars of WHIP into there? Yeah, that was about all. It wasn’t much. And he wrote that up to about eight hundred dollars. And I just said, wait a minute, how can you do that? How can you add that much on to what it was? Shouldn’t they just be paying for the time it took? And he said, oh no, oh no, because that’s the value that the client puts on it.

And so, you know, they were really doing sort of quasi-value billing. But they weren’t really consciously doing it. So that was really interesting. And then I thought, and then the other thing that I always thought was bizarre was in audit, everything is on a flat fee basis. So why should we track our time at all? Why?

Yeah. If the focus is, let’s just get it done, then does it really matter how long it takes us to get it done? Now I understand the mindset and the philosophy of, hey, let’s track our time from the standpoint of making sure that we are doing the things that we need to do within the time frame that we allotted to get it done. And so we’ll know if we’re making money. There’s a part of me that gets that. I get that. I understand that, but from the standpoint of billing, I don’t necessarily buy into that.

I’ve said to several people on the podcast, I’ve talked to a number of clients about this over the last couple of years, but I think Liz, if you pack a hundred people in public accounting into one room at all levels, from staff people that have been there for one year, to partners that have been in the business for 35 years and you said, hey, give us the five biggest frustrations in the industry right now, three to five, what are they? I guarantee you that every one of them somewhere on their list, timesheets, time tracking is going to be on every one of them. Okay, we’ll be generous. Let’s say 80%, 80 percent are going to say time tracking, timesheets, somewhere in there. And I’ve just contended if you packed a hundred people in a room in any space, and 80 percent of them agreed that this one thing, along with other things, but this one thing commonality between 80 percent of them is a problem. You would sit there and say, okay, let’s address this because this apparently is a problem with a big number of people in this room. Therefore, it’s probably a bigger problem with the industry as a whole or the market as a whole. So let’s figure this out.

And so it boggles my mind that people still wrestle with that on a large scale. And obviously there are firms that don’t. And from what I’ve seen in, and you tell me if you see the same thing in the people you talk to, those firm leaders that are embracing, let’s take this person that’s great at client interaction, and let’s have them focus on that. This person that’s really good at the technical aspect of things, let’s have them focus on those things. This tech person, let’s have them focus in this area. The people that have done that are people that either have completely ditched hourly based billing, time and billing cultures, or if it’s in their system still or in their environment still, it’s not the basis by which they bill their clients. They’re subscription based, value based billing environments. Is that kind of what you’ve seen?

That’s exactly right. They focus on the deliverable, not the time it takes, because the clients don’t really care how long it takes. They don’t care. They just want the answer.

Yeah, absolutely. They just want the answer. They want communication. That’s really all they want. I’m a consumer. I’m a user of the services, and I’ve never once said to my tax accountant, hey, how long did it take you to do my return? I don’t care how long it takes them to do my return. I just want to know, am I going to owe? Am I not going to owe? Or am I going to owe what we talked about I was probably going to owe this year? Is there anything that I need to potentially be surprised about? That’s really all I want to know. I don’t care how long it takes you to get there, just get to the end result.

Yeah. Well, and the flip side of that is that then, if you’re cracking the whip on billable hours for your people, then sometimes they may choose the least efficient way to do something because they’ve got to get to that billable hour target this week. I can remember a couple of times where I thought, well, I’m supposed to get to, I need another five billable hours this week, and I’ve got this new project, and well, you know, I could just import everything directly and it would take me 10 minutes to do it, or I could type it in manually and that’ll eat up three hours. So yeah, I’m going to do the slow way.

Yeah. It’s not a mindset of efficiency at all. You know, a very simplistic example of that, but nonetheless, it is an example of that: You know, we just moved into our house a couple of months ago. And before we moved into our house in the backyard, if you will, it was still just, you know, a bunch of mess. There were big piles of scrap wood that the builders, you know, they would cut a board, throw it down, you know, that kind of thing, two huge piles. My builder said hey, I’m just going to bring a dump truck in here and a front end loader. And I’m going to throw all that stuff in the back. And I was like, there’s some good wood in there. So before you do that, let me sift through that, decide what I want to keep.

So I talked to two young boys at church, 14, 15 year old boys, told them what I needed done. And they said, how much will you pay? And I said, I don’t know. I mean, I’ll pay you, you know, whatever it takes to get it done. So they got here on a Saturday morning. And I told them, I think I had told them I was going to pay them $10 an hour and I figured it would take them, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of a day and a half to two days to get it all done, something, a couple hundred bucks. So, they each got here, I had $400, I had four $100 bills, and I held them up and I said, these are yours, two each. I don’t care how long it takes you to do this, just get it done. If you want to take all day today and all day tomorrow, to earn your 200 bucks each, knock yourself out. But if you can get this done in half a day to my satisfaction in the way I want it done, $400 is yours. Those two boys were done at two o’clock on Saturday. Took them six hours to get it done. And they kept asking, you know, are you sure? Are you sure? Are we doing it right? Is there anything else that we, their mindset was, hey, let’s just get it done. He’s going to pay us. Let’s do it the way he wants it done, and let’s just get it done. And I think that really is the ultimate goal, in my opinion, as an end user of accounting services. That’s really the ultimate goal. Let’s just get it done. I don’t care how long it takes you. Just get it done. I know what it’s going to cost me. Just get it done.

That’s right. That’s absolutely right.

When you look at the people that you’ve talked to on your Disruptors podcast, what would you say are the one to two biggest consistent challenges that you’re hearing from people that are keeping them up at night?

Talent and constant changes in regulations. You know, the last few tax seasons, there have been these last minute tax changes that happen after January 1st, that will impact, that go back to last year. And so practitioners have to think, do I file all the returns now, or do I wait until the software catches up? You know, that’s one thing that keeps them awake.

The other thing is talent, you know. And we’ve already talked about this. People are not coming into the profession in the numbers that they used to, people are not sitting for the CPA exam, and they’re not staying in accounting, and even if they do graduate with a degree in accounting, they might not be going into public accounting because, you know, back when I got my degree, I didn’t have this whole internet, Reddit, and podcasts and Facebook groups that were telling all these horror stories about how horrible it was. So I went in just kind of naively, this is what you do.

So people are already self selecting out of accounting. Firm leaders, they’re really struggling to find the people. The other side of that is the ones who have figured out how to build a good culture, how to give their people work life balance, how to make the work engaging and exciting, and really how to be a leader that people will follow, then they’re not really having problems, there’s a line out their door, people waiting to get in.

Yep. And I think that the challenge that people need to understand when we start talking about talent is so many times, because we, and when I say we, I’m talking you and I, we spend so much time in the public accounting circle. So many times we think that talent problem is a public accounting problem. And the reality is that talent problem is not a public accounting problem, that talent is an accounting problem. And I know that we were talking about before we started recording, you’re seeing that with some of your clients on the communication side that are on the corporate side facing that challenge.

Absolutely.

Talk a little bit about that.

Absolutely. Yeah. So one of my big clients is a tech firm that makes closed management software for the industry side. So they work with a lot of controllers and accounting managers and accounting teams on that side. And those companies. Teams, the controllers, accounting managers, they are having to do so much more with so many fewer people. The regulation side has just increased incredibly. They are facing so much complexity in what they do. There’s so many demands on them. And there’s so many demands to get the numbers out faster, close the books faster and faster. And they’re having to do this with fewer and fewer people. You know, technology can help some, that can alleviate some of that, but there just aren’t enough people to man the technology to do that.

Now, on the industry side, a lot of auditors, especially from Big Four firms, tend to move over to industry. And especially in accounting technology software, they tend to migrate wholesale over. But it’s not always a s rosy on the industry side, because again, you’ve got too much work, too few people and a history and a tradition of really terrible management. But I’m beginning to see that there’s some changes, and some of the work that I’ve been doing has been to try to encourage the development of positive accounting team culture on the industry side. Because it’s not just public accounting.

No, It is an accounting problem across the board. And I think there are several, there’s several issues with that culture, environment, the mindset of people within the corporate world towards accounting. Hey, it’s a cost center, it’s not a profit center. I think compensation is still driving some of that. We don’t deal in our business on the recruiting side, we don’t go out and pursue corporate side business. The only way we end up working corporate side roles is one of our CPA firm clients reaches out to us and says, Hey, we’ve got a client that needs to hire a controller, accounting manager, can you help them?

And sometimes we will, sometimes we won’t, but we’ll always engage with their client to find out what are you looking for? Are we a potential solution or can we refer you to somebody? And still, the consistent challenge that I talk to these corporate side clients about when I talk to them is compensation, especially at staff and senior level. It’s not as glaring, manager, director, controller, assistant controller. It’s not as glaring there. But, we’ll talk to, earlier this week, I talked to a firm that’s looking for a two year to four year heavy staff, light senior, accountant in their GL accounting group, and they’re not a small firm. They’re a 75, 80 person corporate entity. They’re doing somewhere in the neighborhood of about $25 to 30 million in revenue. Degreed accountant, ideally we want a CPA, and the compensation on the role, we’re thinking is 65 to 75.

Oh, yeah. No. No.

And, you know, trying to get them to understand, you’re not going to get somebody for 65 to 75. Not in today’s marketplace at that level. Now if you want to look at an entry level person, maybe someone that’s done an internship, maybe one year of experience, possibly. But if you’re looking two to four years experience, that’s not going to cut it. And again, it’s still that mindset of, you know, pressing compensation in that area. And I think that corporations, as well as public accounting firms are going to have to start to look at more aggressively, what are we paying in accounting? And is the offset of a constraining or shrinking of profit margin, is that a good offset to pay people, and get the numbers we want? And I think it is. I think it is. I think the firms are going to have to look at it and say, hey, if we’re running, you know, X percent net income, but we increase compensation and we compress those numbers to 3%, 4%, but we’re still making good money, that’s a win.

Yes. And also, I think there is a tiny spark of a movement starting to move corporate accounting out of strictly the cost center and into a partner for the company, somebody that can help drive profit, somebody who can do the analysis and bring ideas to the table of how to create efficiencies and synergies that will make things better. You know, maybe what you need is a piece of software that can handle a function, and so instead of needing three people to do this, maybe you just need one part time person to do it. So, there’s so much.

And you can start to get those people with the talent to be more strategic in what it is that they’re able to do and less tactical in the work that they are doing. Again, in looking at the work that you’re doing on the communication side, what does your ideal type client look like that you are writing for? Because I know that there are firms out there and there are firm leaders that have great stories, great messages, solid ideas. They need to figure out how to get them out there, and they may not be the best person to sit down and put it on paper. Or, you know, paper euphemistically. Do we write on paper anymore?

I do. I sometimes do.

Where have you found kind of your sweet spot from a client or avatar perspective that you work with?

Some of my favorite clients are people who have moved out of the actual running of firms, but they’re taking the ideas that they learned over a career, a long career of doing the stuff, and they’re helping firm leaders learn to do what they’re doing. They’re the leaders who are taking a fresh look at things, who are thinking creatively, and innovatively, who are saying, you know, look, if we don’t change what we’re doing, the accounting profession as a whole may evaporate. It may be taken over by other industries. So those are the people that I really like to work with.

And they’re a lot of fun because they have stories of how they have helped their clients, these accounting firms, solve what seem to be insurmountable problems in their processes and in their culture, just the way that they do things—help them solve things and create better firms. Some have, you know, helped firms, instead of looking to create a firm that’s sellable, they create a firm that they now want to stay in for another 10 years or so, because it’s no longer draining the life out of them. They’ve been able to create something really wonderful. Those are the people I really like to work with.

And you know, Liz, I think there’s a lot of firm owners out there from my perspective that I talk to that have gotten so lost in what they’ve built, not by design, they just kind of looked up one day and over the last 20 years built a 30, 40, 50 person firm that is a replication of everything they left, you know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, and said, man, I don’t want to be like those guys. It’s interesting you say that because that’s one of the things within our advisory piece of our business that we have, that’s one of the things that we look for in our business, our ideal client is those firm leaders that built some amazing legacy firms, but they’re just stinking tired because of what they built and they forgot, how did I get here? What was I passionate about? And it’s stereotypically people, clients, solutions, and helping those people, one, remember their story, and then get that story out is so powerful. And I think it’s something that needs to be done more for some of those great firms out there. Where do you see the greatest opportunity or one or two opportunities for firms to say, you know what, here’s some things we can do to really impact the next 12, 24, 36 months of who we are?

I would say one thing that firms could do is look at their client list, get rid of the awful ones, talk to your people and say, okay, who are the people who, when their email lands in your inbox or when their number shows up on your caller ID, you go, oh my god, let me pretend that I am out of the office and unavailable. Get rid of those, just get rid of them, and that will free up so much capacity. I know firms are afraid that, well, we’ll lose so much revenue, but when you clear away all of the trauma, then your people will have the bandwidth and the energy to work with your best clients, the ones who are dying for additional services, but you just haven’t had the bandwidth to provide them. If you can zero in on your best clients, and what you can do for them, how you can help them achieve their goals, then you’ve got a goldmine. It really just starts with understanding what your clients want to achieve.

And I think that when you do that, you have the opportunity, time-wise, to sit with your clients and begin to understand what do they want to achieve? We’ve got a client that we work with in Austin that from day one, their mindset was, we’re not going to run at capacity. We’re just not. We are going to always be overstaffed. We’re going to measure our business development with our employee headcount because we’re going to focus on value add to our customer. Our money, our value is not in the transaction of work. It’s not cranking out tax returns. It’s not doing monthly bookkeeping and accounting. Those are minimum things that our clients are going to expect us to do. The value we’re going to bring is an advisory, consulting, strategic work. And because they operate that way, they’ve got the capacity to think creatively.

We were looking for a leader for an expansion into the Houston marketplace for them last year. We found a guy that wasn’t necessarily a good tactical tax leader, but he was coming out of a big fours M&A tax group. He’s a lawyer. Was interested in talking to him, was very clear that, hey, I’m probably not the tactical leader they’re looking for, but I’m open to talking. I called my client, we started talking about it and he said, you know what, John, we did just over $750 million in transactions for our customers, buy sell transactions, over the last two years. And all of the legal fees that could have been generated from those transactions, we had to farm out to a third party, all of them. So I’d like to talk to that guy. Because if he’s the type of person that fits our culture, I don’t care if he generates a dime of revenue for us over the next five years. If all he does is allow us to keep just half of those legal fees in house, and not farm them out, he’s not only paying for himself, we’re probably making more money, we’re bringing more value to the customer and we’re controlling the transaction more. So yeah, let’s talk to the guy.

When you operate like you’re talking about, hey, let’s get rid of those headache clients and let’s focus on the value, there’s so much more bandwidth that you have as a firm. To be able to look at and say, you know, not necessarily what’s the next type of athlete I need, you have the ability to look and say, who’s the best athlete out there that could make us better as a whole.

Right. You’re no longer just trying to fill in warm bodies or garbage clients who can fill up the calendar during the less busy times.

Yep. You’re putting yourself in a more strategic, profit focused position, solutions focused mindset. I think you’re right. I think that’s a big win that clients can wrap their head and minds around pretty quickly. You know, Liz, I want to thank you so much for spending some time with us today talking about, you know, the view of the accounting world from your unique perspective. If there are folks that want to reach out to you, either, to talk to you about your ghostwriting services, your podcast, learn more a little bit about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for people to reach you and find you?

Well, you can find me on my website, which is FarrCommunications.com. I’m also on Twitter and LinkedIn.

So mostly on LinkedIn and your email, or excuse me, your, website, FarrCommunications, that’s Farr with two R’s.

Yes, that’s correct.

So FarrCommunications.com. We’ll make sure we get all of that information in the show notes. Liz, again, I want to thank you so much for spending time with us today. It’s been a joy to learn more about you and what you’re doing.

And the feeling is mutual. Thank you so much, John.

And for those of you that are listening, if you enjoyed what you heard today, hit that subscribe button to ensure that you won’t miss any future episodes where we spend more time talking about CPA Life. Until next time.

We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting app, leave a five star rating and visit our website for links and show notes at CPALifePodcast.com. We’ll see you next time on CPA Life.

Important Links:

Farr Communications

The Disruptors with Liz Farr, CPA Trendlines

Liz Farr on LinkedIn

The Future of Accounting: Leadership and Culture with Liz Farr

Transcript:

Important Links:

About the Guest: